


God's in the Reese's Pieces

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Chuck Needs a Hug, Chuck is God, De-Aged Dean Winchester, Dean Needs A Hug, Dean-Centric, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Healing, Hugs, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Kid Dean Winchester, Pancakes, Parental Castiel, Protective Castiel, Protective Chuck, Team Free Will 2.0
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7837879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amara decides to give her brother a Sorry-I-Almost-Ended-Everything gift. <br/>And ends up giving Team Free Will 2.0 more than they could ever have expected.<br/>Or, the one where Dean is literally four again, God is Chuck is Daddy, Sam freaks out, Cas stress bakes, Crowley makes animal balloons, Rowena gets more stories to add to her collection, and Amara stops her brother from committing murder. Oh, the irony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At the End

It happens in an instant. 

One moment Dean is standing slightly hunched, his insides burning with literal soulfire, his eyes riveted on the possibly biblically epicness happening right in front of his eyes, because when does one of these showdowns actually end like this, with forgiveness and hand holding and love. 

One moment, Dean is watching Amara turn from creepy stalker to sympathetic sister, hand clasping God’s with an urgent sense of purpose, an undeniable undertone of affection in every glance. Dean watches God’s face soften. He knows that look, sees it on Sam’s face at least once a decade, when the little shit actually gets past his own issues enough to realize Dean’s only ever wanted to be a family. 

And wow, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of how fucked up in the head he is that Sam’s God in this scenario, and he’s the frigging Darkness. 

One moment melts into the next, and Amara’s hand is sliding from her brother’s wrist to clasp his fingers, Chuck’s squeezing back with desperate purpose. 

Dean has a moment more to observe Chuck turning towards him, seeming to remember he was standing there for the first time. Has a moment to see that soft concern, that gentle affection and patient tolerance one last time. Has a moment to reflect on how odd those blue eyes are, because God isn’t supposed to be compassionate, isn’t supposed to look at a fuck up like Dean and see anything remotely worthy of anything. Because Dean may have been Heaven’s effed up fated friggin chosen one, but Heaven was possibly douchier than Hell at this point, if Crowley vs. Lucifer was anything to go by, and no Cas doesn’t fucking count, because he’s Dean’s angel damnit, not Heaven’s!

Because Dean has never payed the blindest bit of attention to the less fire and brimstone sections of organized religious doctrine, but he’s fairly certain that when you meet God, he isn’t supposed to talk about your fucked up childhood, he isn’t supposed to say “don’t confuse me with your dad”, he isn’t supposed to even give you the time of day. 

He isn’t supposed to make you cry. He isn’t supposed to give you more of a time of day than your own dad ever did. He isn’t supposed to give you more undivided attention, to actually sit around long enough to even listen to your grievances, than John frigging Winchester ever did. 

He isn’t supposed to end the meeting with a shoulder pat and an “I’ve always had faith in you”, no matter how passive aggressive it might have been.  
And he sure as hell isn’t supposed to make you and your little brother fucking pancakes. 

Dean’s been making his and Sam’s breakfast since he was four for crying out loud. 

Dean has a moment to have one more ironic thought about how effing ironic their lives have gotten, as blue eyes that once again look more like they hold a doorway to the universe rather than a portal to a black-hole regard him with that infinitely weird mix of affection, exasperation, resignation, pride, faith, and love. 

Has a moment to reflect on how much he misses his dad. The one he never got to have because heaven are dicks and demons are even dickier. How much he misses Bobby. 

And then Amara’s free hand raises faster than God can react, the Almighty’s own hand coming forward a moment later, whether to beckon or shield or protest Dean never finds out. 

The last thing he remembers is those blue eyes, fathomless as the stars, staring into his green ones with so much love. 

And then everything fades.


	2. Healing Dean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so, um...I like posting updates at yearly intervals? *Hides*

Chuck…doesn’t actually know what to do with this. Children hadn’t been on the list of parts of humanity to be interacted with beyond “bench watching.” 

Shaking his head vigorously, because thinking of Rowena’s Fergus is really counterproductive at this moment, and just to check his vessel’s eyes are working correctly, Chuck mentally rewrites his expectations of what constitutes weird. He should have remembered to add Winchester to that sentence in the first place. 

Head shaking apparently doesn’t help, even if you’re actually God, because there is still a small, owlishly blinking thing standing on the path at his feet, John Winchester’s faded leather jacket hanging on the ground in all the wrong places. 

Dean has apparently been a very small four-year-old. And tragic childhood or not, fated chosen one of heaven or not, the fact Chuck knows what Dean looked like at four is probably an indication he really, really needs to get a life. Or get out more. Or stop snapchatting about petunias with that cat lady in Dorset. 

Chuck then tries blinking really hard, just in case. Nope, tiny Winchester still present and accounted for, still suspiciously silent and not-crying. 

God turns a stern gaze on the Darkness, and tries for forbidding and brimstone conjuring, “What did you do?!” It comes out more squeaky than he would have liked. Well, Amara always his older sister after all. 

Said older sister has the gall to look shocked at her brother’s shock. “I wanted to do something nice for Dean, after everything he’s done for me. I thought you’d be pleased brother.”

Chuck snaps his index finger at the tiny hunter hovering uncertainly before their knees. “How is this remotely nice? You turned Dean Winchester into a toddler!” 

Amara actually appears to be pouting. So much for that older part. “I believe the correct term is preschooler, although judging from the unexpectedly tiny proportions, it is hard to tell for certain.” Chuck growls in the back of his throat, “That is so not the point sister!” 

The Darkness perks up at the sister bit, and starts warming to her previous theme. “And in any case, Dean doesn’t appear to be unhappy with the transformation.” 

They both turn back to stare at the still decidedly not-crying toddl-child. And okay, the whole not crying thing is starting to get kinda creepy at this point. 

Chuck takes a step forward, his sneakers brushing loudly over loose pebbles in the garden path. He quirks his lips up into what he hopes is a comforting smile, his knees beginning to lower to the garden stones. “Hey there buddy-,”

However that sentence was going to end, Chuck has absolutely no idea, and thus he is almost glad for the rather large gun that is suddenly being pointed steadily at his forehead. Almost. 

That is, he would be grateful, if the firearm didn’t appear to be bigger than the head of the four-year-old holding it. Said child’s eyes are large and fixed, narrow enough to affect a confidence Chuck suspects the boy doesn’t remotely feel. There are days Chuck would cheerfully roast heaven into a million pieces, simply for the comfort of knowing that somewhere up there, John Winchester would be roasting into ash. 

“What have you done with Sammy?” And people thought God was a bad father. Chuck is summoning up the breath for a cheerful, “Well!”, when Amara sashes up to his shoulder, apparently unconcerned by the presence of the-Chuck squints, Glock?

“Why is he asking for his brother?” Chuck carefully doesn’t look at his sister’s half-bare leg, wondering how wildly inappropriate it would be to beg his big sister to just put on some decent clothing, please at this moment in time. He also briefly wonders if this is all part of some elaborate plot to kill him after all, because Chuck knows his own weaknesses as well as Amara does, and compassion as always been the worst one. 

He settles instead for the most obvious, if not the most pressing concern, “How much time did you actually spend with the Boys?” 

Amara seems unphased, although Chuck doesn’t actually dare to move his head enough to look. 

“I spent time with Dean, not “the Boys.”” Chuck opens his mouth to point out that is practically the same thing, when a clicking sound echoes through the conservatory. Chuck surfed enough free streaming sites to know what the sound of a safety being clicked off sounds like. 

Remarkably, Dean’s matchstick thin arm has not so much as wavered once in the last few minutes. “Last chance! Where the hell is my little brother you bastard!” 

And just like that, burning heaven down is back on the table. Chuck may not know much about children these days, but even he knows that no four-year-old should know how to talk like that. Should have to know how to talk like that. 

Amara’s opinion on her brother’s sudden cloud of rage filling the air around them is rendered irrelevant by Chuck finally, finally focusing on the correct thing in this scenario. The important thing. Dean. 

And the loaded gun. But mostly Dean. He can burn down heaven later. He’s sure Castiel will help him get the matches. And Amara always has liked explosions a little too much. 

“Sammy’s not here right now Dean. He’s with your father.” That produces only more suspicion, Dean’s eyes narrowing at the gentle tone Chuck is affecting. And there goes God’s heart, because damn if that isn’t confusion in those little child eyes. 

Chuck reaches out a hand, his knees sinking harder into the concrete. He suppresses a wince at this abuse of his kneecaps. When did God get old? 

He closes his fingers around the top of the gun with a firm purpose he doesn’t quite feel all the way, forcing his tone to go cold and stern. “Sam is safe Dean, you have my word. You can stand down now soldier.” And there goes the rest of God’s heart, because damnit if that doesn’t work like a charm, Dean’s entire tiny frame collapsing like a ragdoll as the gun jerks into Chuck’s palm. 

And apparently this wasn’t all some elaborate fratricidal plot, because whatever power flicked that safety back on at just the right moment, it sure as hell wasn’t Chuck’s. 

He’s twisting his head to the side to thank her, the gun carelessly banished to points who cares, Dean’s head and shoulders cradled carefully between Chuck’s outstretched hands when he finally notices the blood seeping through Dean’s white shirt. 

Yeah, forget burning. Chuck is going fricking nuclear on that shit. 

00

“Brother, you can’t destroy the entirety of heaven just to punish the crimes of one man.” The ironies of this entire conversation are lost on Chuck in the hurried scramble of moving Dean to the closest available flat surface that isn’t covered in dirt. Chuck almost drops the boy for being even lighter than he anticipated, and Amara has to create a clean tabletop for them because Chuck as forgotten this is a conservatory and wow, he spent way too long as Chuck didn’t he. 

This conversation only sprung up in light of Chuck’s lack of reaction when he finally noticed the bruises. Under the circumstances, Chuck feels he deserves a lot of kudos for that restraint. 

Carefully devesting this miniaturized Dean Winchester of his oversized shirt, which clearly belonged to an adult in another life, but is both too Marines and too eighties to be anything but a John Winchester hand-me-down, proves to be a more difficult process than first anticipated. 

For starters, they clearly have to add a broken arm to the inventory of injuries. Chuck bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. As soon as this was done, blowing up would be commencing in heaven. 

Amara trailed an idyll hand through Dean’s shorn locks, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I hadn’t realized they came in sizes this delicate and fragile looking.” It is hard to tell if that tone is awed or contemplative. 

Yeah, leaving his big sister to babysit this version of Dean while he goes off to blow up John Winchester might warrant some quick rethinking on his part. 

Chuck stares down at the freshly exposed wounds dotting Dean’s chest, many of which are still bleeding freely. Yeah, smiting all of heaven may just be too mild a solution. 

He doesn’t realize his fingers are burning holes into the fabric of Dean’s balled up shirt until Amara carefully lays a hand over his own, forcing his eyes to fall away from the agonizing sight of Dean’s small chest struggling to draw in a deep breath, even in unconsciousness. 

Amara’s eyes are liquid black-brown, shifting from hazel to ebony and back. He could really get to like those eyes. They suit his sister. God he’s missed his sister. Chuck chokes on his own bad pun. Which is so wrong, because normally he’s the king of bad puns-

“Brother, you need to…calm yourself. Take deep breaths,” Amara appears to really be grasping at straws here, but hey, he’s in no position to be throwing stones on self-control techniques in this moment, “Dean needs you to be strong right now.” 

Now those words? Those are exactly the right thing to say. But also, “That sounds like something Dean would say.” His sister smiles, warm and small and sad. 

“Well, let’s just say I had a good teacher on this whole humanity gig.” And yeah, that’s definitely a Dean-o original right there. God feels something start to glow inside of his chest, something deep and endless, something he has not felt in countless millennia. Not like this. 

Turning back to Dean’s small frame, Chuck carefully lays a hand on the boy’s chest, and pushes through himself. The glow envelops the entire conservatory, golden light streaming through every crack in the earth, every window and skylight. Later, the newspapers will suggest someone detonated some kind of light bomb on the premises, but no traces of any such device are ever found. 

In this moment, as the light dissipates, Chuck is left with an armful of peacefully sleeping but unblemished little boy, a grinning big sister, and a feeling of warm contentment he hasn’t allowed himself to cherish since before this world began. 

Chuck gazes down at Dean’s scar and wound free chest, rising and falling with a reassuring regularity and smoothness. For the moment, his burning anger at the boy’s father ebbs away in the face of being able to do something real and immediate to help one of the billions of battered children this world he created has left behind. 

Dean was right, God reflected bitterly, hands off parenting really kind of sucked. Perhaps it really was time to try something new. 

Amara’s voice cut into his musings with growing impatience. “Brother, are you finished healing him yet?” 

Chuck looks down at the sleeping boy in his arms, the small head nuzzled carefully against his chest. The physical marks are indeed gone, but Chuck feels far from contented. 

“No, I suspect we’re very far from being done healing Dean Winchester, Sister.”


	3. Lebanon is that way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End Note: Amara was originally going to leave at the start of this chapter and stay gone for several more chapters but, well, as you see.

“We” turns out to last roughly the time it takes Chuck to walk out of the conservatory with Dean in his arms and mojo up a car. A pink jaguar. Yeah, Chuck really needs to get out more. 

Amara stares in disbelief. “Brother, you really need to get out more.” Yeah, already noted thanks.

Chuck is busy attempting to figure out the best way to secure a blissfully still sleeping Dean in the backseat when his big sister turns into a cloud of smoke and flits off, something about seeing what French pigeons thought of breadcrumbs filtering around the edges of Chuck’s mind. 

He sends back, “Try birdseed, bread is bad for them,” and turns back to the task at hand. His priorities might be slightly skewed again. 

Finally settling for simply using heavenly Grace to secure Dean in place, Chuck slides behind the wheel and starts the engine before he remembers he never quite got round to actually taking those driving lessons he signed up for. 

Try fastening your seat belt for starters little brother. Chuck mentally growls at Amara, and snaps his fingers to start the car heading steadily for the highway. 

Belatedly, he snaps them again to cloak Dean from prying eyes of traffic cops or other, deadlier potential hazards. 

After reassuring himself that Dean is safe for the moment, Chuck hesitantly places his hands on the steering wheel. Huh. This looked easier in the movies. 

The car jerked forward experimentally, startling a flock of pigeons from a nearby roof. Chuck considered notifying Amara, then thought better of it as he narrowly missed colliding with a most poorly placed telephone pole. 

Perhaps it was a good idea to keep his eyes on the road at this particular juncture. 

00

Dean wakes up just as they’re passing their thousandth tree. 

Chuck, giving up for long stretches and just Mojoing the car to run in a straight line, has counted at least that many in the past hour. 

If fact, he is so absorbed in approaching five thousand that he fails to register Dean’s wakefulness right up to and including the moment the injured preschooler flicks off the safety of a Glock he got from who only knows where, and firmly pressed it to the back of Chuck’s skull. 

“Pull over!” And damnit if that didn’t sound eerily like the adult version. The gun pressed harder into the back of his head, even as his foot slammed desperately on the brake in an attempt to avoid a squirrel that appears to have materialized out of thin air in the center of the oncoming road. 

They rocket forward with a bone shaking jolt, the gun slipping off Chuck’s skull to bang on the seat. Chuck freezes the bullet in the chamber just in time, blinking in the stunned stillness that followed. 

Behind him, Dean appeared to be either wincing in pain or plotting Chuck’s demise. 

Past the windshield, the squirrel ambles to the other side of the road, apparently utterly unproterebed by it’s near brush with death. 

Click. The Glock’s hammer slides back. “Where’s Sammy?!” Chuck groans. 

It’s official. God makes a terrible parent. 

00  
It is Amara who saves their bacon in the end. 

Chuck has always been puzzled by that phrase. Why bacon? And who precisely has ownership of said animal by-product. 

Not important right now Brother! Right, time to focus. Glock pointed at his head by small child. Problem. Big one.

God is apparently a master of understatement, no matter what form he chooses to take. Chuck snorts at the existential thought, and feels the gun press closer. “Where’s my little brother?” So, they’re back to that. And yep, that was most definitely a growl. 

And that was most definitely a yelp. Chuck whirls around in his seat, barely registering the vanishing of the gun muzzle’s weight from his neck, his eyes widening at the improbable sight of his sister, still in the same alarmingly revealing black dress, sitting beside a stunned Dean, who appears to be holding an entire bundle of animal shaped balloons in the place of the Glock. Chuck blinks again. 

Dean blinks as well, then his breath hitches once, twice. Chuck is out of the car before they get to three. 

Holding a petrified and shaking Dean moments later, Chuck levels a glare at his sister, his mouth opening to lecture on the evils of frightening small children, Winchesters or otherwise, when Amara flattens him with a truly armour piercing question, devastating in its confused innocence. 

“Brother, should he not also be crying?” 

Perhaps recruiting Amara to his “Smite John Winchester” campaign would not be so very hard after all. 

00

 

Dean’s little body still feels dangerously fragile in Chuck’s arms, his tiny chest heaving in each breath as if he had run a marathon, his heart a wild and caged thing, attempting to escape his chest with every rapid beat. Chuck cast about in his memory desperately, Amara and her animal balloons long forgotten. 

The rain falls in sheets all around them, only to bounce off mere inches above his head, and beginning going back up. Chuck doesn’t even notice. He can worry about Amara rewriting the laws of physics later. 

He has far more important things to deal with right how. Like a little boy having a panic attack in the middle of nowhere Kansas. Huh, well at least they’re in the right State now anyway. 

A puff of air gusts hot and pained against Chuck’s cheek. He blinks, and suddenly it comes to him. Idiot, Amara thinks. Chuck would almost venture to call the tone of that fond. Almost. 

Scuffed sneakers scrabbling up the car’s hood, finding purchase and pushing backwards, God gathers Dean closer to his chest, his little feet wresting against Chuck’s curled up knees, his eyes gazing fixedly at the rain droplets descending from the heavens. 

Chuck clears the crackle out of his throat, and squeezes his eyes shut against Dean’s painful wheezes. He clutches the boy tighter, and finally, finally, begins to sing. 

“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better…”

And slowly, slowly, Dean begins to breath. 

00

Eventually, they return to their previous configuration, minus guns and the Darkness. Dean is silent in the back, but his eyes follow Chuck’s every movement with something that might, just might, be more anxious curiousity than petrified terror. He hopes. 

To be fair, eventually uttering the magic words, “We’re going to see Sammy,” had probably helped a great deal. And it was true. They were going to see Sam. 

His sister pops back in a moment later, not allowing Chuck query why she had even bothered to leave for such a short time before she shoved a mountain of candy pink cotton candy into his face. “Here brother, you must try this!” 

Chuck takes an obliging bite, nearly choking on the sugar content, and carefully magics Dean’s own bounty into something slightly healthier. 

Dean eats the celery-yeah, driving takes a lot of brain power, okay!-with enough gusto that Chuck shoots a menacing glower heavenward. Just you wait John Winchester. 

Amara must sense his thoughts, because she chooses that moment to come out of the following bombshell. 

“He likes to do this.” Chuck blinked. 

“The one the boys call Cas, the fallen angel. Castiel. He likes to appear when Dean is driving.” Chuck feels his throat tighten at the mention of his younger son. He isn’t sure why. 

Amara stares out the window. “They like to laugh together.” 

Chuck tries desperately to remember when he last heard Cas laugh, and narrowly avoids driving over a flock of crows. 

He comes up empty. Huh, perhaps there is more to this parenting thing than bringing your children back from the dead with alarmingly frequency. 

“Brother.” Chuck waits, “There is a moose in the direct path of this vehicle.” Snapping his fingers to skip past the moose, Chuck groaned in frustration. 

This was proving to be a very, very long trip indeed. 

 

00

“Brother.” Chuck considers praying for patience, but, well. “Yes Sister?” 

“I believe Lebanon is in the opposite direction to which this vehicle is currently travelling. 

To her credit his sister manages to remain completely blank of expression as she informs him of this. For about ten seconds. 

Chuck resisted the urge to bang his head repeatedly on the steering wheel, and prayed anyone. What the heck, someone might even be listening. 

Dean’s voice has only the slightest quiver, and sounds far, far too old for his current age. “You need to do a U-turn.” Chuck glances at Amara. Yep, identical confusion to his own there. Great, the four-year-old was the driving expert in this scenario. Perfect. 

Chuck snapped his fingers, the car pointing in the correct direction before his fingers fully separate. He shoots a glance in the rear-view mirror. “Better kiddo?” 

Dean appears to give this serious consideration for a moment, then… “Your wheels are a little crooked.” From beside him, Amara lets out a rather undignified snort.   
Chuck grabs the wheel haphazardly and jerks it to the right. Dean blinks at him. 

Right, wrong way again. Chuck rolls his eyes to the roof of the car, and considers just flying them all to his dimension pocket slash bar to look at cat pictures. 

“Brother?” Chuck resolutely stares upward. “We are about to be impacted by a large, speeding vehicle.” Chuck’s eyes snap open, his fingers ready to follow suit. 

The highway is completely empty. He slides his eyes to his little sister once again. 

He totally should have stayed at the Bunker and had that second cup with Rowena. 

Amara grins insouciantly at her big brother, flashing a smirk worthy more of the age of her giggling companion that her own eons old stature. Chuck hunches down in his seat stubbornly, his hands gripping the steering wheel with even more completely unnecessary intensity. 

And it is hard to take offense, to hold so much as a sibling size grudge about his sister’s relentless teasing, not when she’s getting mini-Dean to giggle of all things. 

Still, he’s not the younger brother for nothing. 

He doesn’t grumble though. Chuck is most insistent on that point. 

He mumbles. There, much better. 

“I hate you both.” And then he freezes, because he just said I hate you to a four-year-old, a four-year-old raised by John fucking Winchester. 

Chuck jerks his head towards the backseat, only God’s literal grace preventing them all from being flattened by a passing semi-trailer in the process.   
His insides are already turning to proverbial ice when his eyes refocus…and then all he can do is stare. 

There are days when God hates the human race. So very, very many days. Days when he considers smiting them all, when he cannot stand this messy, confusing, cruel, petty, contrary, stubborn race of beings he brought into existence. 

But there are also days he loves the human race, with all of his not inconsiderable being. 

Because that sight right there, right there in front of him? That is the sight of Dean Winchester looking him straight in the eye, and smiling, as if he had not a care in the world.


End file.
